[WiSo]

Problem:
The dvdplayer can init ffmpeg with the amount of available cores. This helps speedup the performance of x264 content and some other codecs. However this feature is disabled for windows as the dll crashes as soon as we start it with threads >= 2.

Approaches:
ffmpeg will be compiled on windows via mingw32. The problem is that depending on which gcc, binutils, ld and other components I use I get different results. Even compiling on different CPUs/OSs makes a difference for me.
On my MBP with Vista SP1 no binary worked regardless of gcc 3.4.5, 4.1.2, 4.2.4 or 4.3.2. On my AMD with XP SP3 I got working builds (one thread) only with 4.1.2 but got problems there yesterday too.
AreaScout a guy from the XBMC channel build up a mingw environment with my help and used exactly the configure options from our svn and the binary works!
It works on both PCs also with more than 1 thread and playback is much smoother.

Problems:
I took the same versions AreaScout used but still no working binary on both PCs. Next step might be to get his build environment to try it out.
Without reproducing it I can't commit the new dlls.

How you can help:
If there's anybody out there with experience in mingw who can explain me this behavior please get in contact with me.
If there's someone who got experience to cross compile win ffmpeg dlls on Linux please tell me how (also not working well, got a bunch of errors).
All hints are appreciated because I'm tired of this mingw environment showing me new and not reproducible behavior every day.

Thanks,
WiSo

[Gamester17]

Maybe register and post mail request for help on ffmpeg-user mailing-list?
http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/mailinglists.html
https://lists.mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listi...mpeg-user/
Note! This would go under ffmpeg-user mailing-list, not their devel mailing-list.

[WiSo]

Problem might be that we use it with our own library loader and the first question might be how does it nativly run.
But maybe worth a try.

[AreaScout]

Hi WiSo

Please contact me on IRC channel, i have the solution and oh!, don't forget the six back beer

RG Area

[Freddo]

oh snap , sorry I couldn't help at all but I've been tracking this bug/issue for a while now, can't wait to make full use of my dual core CPU on windows! looking forward to this solution hitting SVN thanks for your tireless efforts everyone involved.

[AreaScout]

Well we should wait what WiSo is telling after he tested it, we tryed realy a lot, my compilation of dll's are working with dual core very perfect, i also found a solution where i could fix green artefacts on playing H264 files with the latest ffmpeg codec svn and this i hope will also fix WiSo's problem. I run 'I am legend' trailer H264 1080p with only 30% CPU power peaks, average value is 10%

RG Area

[Freddo]

can I help with testing? I have lots of high definition h264 video content and a powerful dual core HTPC.

[WiSo]

Unfortunately the tip of AreaScout didn't work for me and I need a reproducible way of compiling to commit those dlls to svn.
Last chance would be his mingw environment but I can't believe that this should be the problem.
Anyhow AreaScout also asked me about when we're doing an update of our ffmpeg version to the latest svn which I can only forward to our other devs because I asked it already sometime ago

[Freddo]

if this wont make it into SVN can you atleast post the pre-compiled dll's for people who want to go out of their way for them? I understand they wont be supported but I'm still interested to use them.

[WiSo]

Official I won't do it since it will go out into the wild and user will report about it without knowing they don't use the official builds.
But you may ask AreaScout to send it to you

[Gamester17]

Unfortunately the tip of AreaScout didn't work for me

What was the tip though? Why did AreaScout not post it here in the forum?

[AreaScout]

Hi

Because WiSo and me where realy testing a lot, our test's became more and more panic instead of logical thinking we tryed things that you do not try in your regular live ( pray to your PC, give your PC flowers, hug your PC... stuff like that ), so post all this stuff here in public would explode the thread. I couldn't find WiSo in IRC so i was posting here.

btw. my problem was the dependency files a make clean or distclean doesn't delete all of the *.d files and for some reasons this was effect my build ( was playing with different configure switches befor ).

RG Area

[WiSo]

Unfortunately this didn't help me because a make distclean removed all dependency files for me.
Thanks from my side to AreaScout for all the testing. He is also asking when we'll update our svn to the latest ffmpeg revision

[Koying]

Hi there,

I'd also like to have the latest ffmpeg. I use Mythtv as a recorder and my IP TV provider uses a h264 PAFF encoding which seems to be recently completely supported (as it works in VLC 0.9.2), and wasn't before (as in the current XBMC ffmpeg).

I'd like to try to compile my own ffmpeg, too, but I need to know what are the proper ./configure options for XBMC.

Could someone help me with that?

[WiSo]

Look in XBMC\xbmc\cores\dvdplayer\Codecs\ffmpeg\build_xbmc_win32.sh in our svn.
Newest version might not work without altering the resolves in XBMC since ffmpeg changes some of their APIs according to AreaScout.